The Intersection of Controls and Physics in Atomic Force Microscopy

摘要

Not being a control theorist, my goal with this talk isn't to present a significant new result in controls. I'm an experimental physicist with a fairly long background in the design and use of Atomic Force Microscopes (AFM), including several years in companies that build them. My goal with this talk is two-fold. First is to point out some of the areas in AFM where I think controls can make big contributions. I think there are lots of interesting problems to be found and given that there are several thousand AFM's in the world and the market is still growing, it also means that these problems are very relevant (and fundable). Second is to give you a more detailed look into one of these problems - an interesting non-linear dynamics problem that appears in the field. While a fair amount of work has been done on this problem, a better understanding of this problem can lead to improved operation of the microscope.